William Puffer, {probably fictional}

Not a known child of George Puffer & not the husband of Rachel ‘Ruth’ Puffer

Disputed Identity

Zubrinsky in his article "To Say It Doesn't Make It So: Clues to the Probably Identity of the Wife of Jonathan Bliss of Rehoboth, Massachusetts" (footnotes on p. 36) calls it a fact that Ruth Farnsworth is undoubtedly identical with Matthias Puffer's first wife Rachel Farnsworth. Zubrinsky says:

(Quote): "The facts are these: Joseph Farnsworth's daughter Ruth was born at Dorchester on '3d. (4th.) [June] 1642' and baptized there on '4 mo: decimo [16]42' ... Immediately after her baptismal record is the parenthesized update, 'to mr puffer.' There being no further record of Ruth (and none at all of putative husband William), she is undoubtedly identical with Matthias Puffer's first wife Rachel, of whom there is no record until her marriage to Puffer at Braintree, '1 mo [March] 18, 1662,' the same date and place as the marriage of Joseph Farnsworth's daughter Rebecca (29 months older than 'Ruth') ... Joseph Farnsworth inexplicably mentions neither a Ruth nor a Rachel in his will, dated at Dorchester, 2 Jan 1659 ... While the evidence of Rachel Farnsworth's origin is thus not quite definitive, there is none whatsoever of a second-generation William Puffer."[10]

References

• 10. Eugene Cole Zubrinsky, "To Say It Doesn't Make It So: Clues to the Probable Identity of the Wife of Jonathan Bliss of Rehoboth, Massachusetts," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, (Jan 1997), 151:36-7 footnote.[https://www.americanancestors.org/databases/new-england-historical-... subscription